by Julie Otsuka
I’m sorry.
There. That’s it. I’ve said it. Now can I go?
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The author gratefully acknowledges the following works for their help in writing this book: The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans During World War II, by Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis; A Fence Away From Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II, by Ellen Levine; Citizen 13660, by Miné Okubo; Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz, by Sandra C. Taylor; and Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family, by Yoshiko Uchida.
Julie Otsuka
WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE
Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is a graduate of Yale University and received her M.F.A. from Columbia. She lives in New York City.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2003
Copyright © 2002 by Julie Otsuka, Inc.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The chapter “Evacuation Order No. 19” appeared, in slightly different
form, in Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops 1998, edited by
Carol Shields, John Kulka, and Natalie Danford.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Otsuka, Julie.
When the emperor was divine: a novel / by Julie Otsuka.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Fiction.
2. World War, 1939–1945—California—Fiction. 3. Japanese American
families—Fiction. 4. Concentration camps—Fiction.
5. California—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3615.T88 W48 2002
813’.6—dc21 2002020814
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43021-2
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